in the vicinity of Mazatlan River, but not on that stream.
They seem to prefer the stagnant pools and lagoons, whose
waters are murky and densely shaded with overhanging trees;
here upon some dried branch it sits quietly watching the
opaque water for whatever finny creature may make its
appearance upon the surface, when if not too large, it
instantly darts or plunges headlong upon it; after securing
the prey in its powerful bill, it bears it to the perch,
and beating it a few times upon the perch swallows it
entire. Small fishes constitute almost its principal food,
but frogs and small water reptiles are often struck and
devoured by it. This species does not seem to be so wary as
its near congener, the Belted. I have approached it quite
near, in order to observe its habits, and it appeared to
be very little concerned at my presence. In examining the
stomach of one shot by me, I found it crammed with the
small fry peculiar to muddy pools, among which was a mud
catfish of considerable size. It doubtless breeds in holes
scratched in sand cliffs, like the other members of this
family, but I have never encountered the nest.
Dickey and van Rossem (1938) say that in El Salvador--
the ringed kingfisher is of general distribution along
the coast where it shows decided preference for mangrove
lagoons. Locally, the species is almost equally common on
fresh water wherever there is a plentiful supply of small
fish. It is notable, though, that the species attains
its upward limit at Lake Guija at 1,450 feet, and seems
to be absent from the higher lakes such as Ilopango. It
is customarily solitary, although local conditions such
as a very favorable stream may result in a number being
found at one point. A great deal of territory may be
covered by individual birds, for they seem to have regular
routes along lake borders and rivers with lookout perches
at intervals of every few hundred yards. In activity
this species is far ahead of any of the other resident
kingfishers and evidently prefers to range widely for its
prey rather than to stake out a limited, private preserve.
Alexander F. Skutch tells me that in the Caribbean lowlands of
Guatemala and Honduras they are partial to the larger, more open
streams and lagoons, and avoid the narrow, tree-shaded waterways
that the smaller species of kingfisher sometimes frequent.
_Nesting._--Major Bendire (1895) quotes Dr. Herman Burmeister
(1856) as saying that “it nests in perpendicular banks,
occasionally quite a distance from water, in burrows from 5 to 6
feet deep, and lays two white eggs.”
There are two sets of eggs, one of five and one of six eggs, in
the Thayer collection, taken for Frank B. Armstrong, on March 21
and 30, 1910, near Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico. One of the
nests is described as a hole in the bank of a river, 8 feet deep
and 10 feet above water.
Dickey and van Rossem (1938) state that “at San Sebastián in late
July, 1912, nest holes were occasionally noted in vertical sandy
banks. In size these holes were on an average four inches wide and
three inches high at the entrance. Those investigated went straight
back into the bank, in one case as far as six feet. This particular
burrow then may have made a turn, but it was not dug out.”
Alexander F. Skutch has very kindly lent me his unpublished
manuscript for a proposed work on the birds of the Caribbean
lowlands of Central America, which contains much interesting
information on this species, from which I shall quote freely. He
says that, in that region, these kingfishers “begin the excavation
of their burrows in February, if not earlier. Their nesting is of
necessity limited to the drier season when the rivers are lowest,
which in this region extends from February to the end of May. The
flood waters of June often undermine and eat away the banks in
which they nest, if they do not actually rise high enough to flood
their tunnels. Since they begin the excavation of their burrows
early and raise a single brood each year, they proceed with their
task in a leisurely fashion, and one may watch long and in vain for
them to return to their work.
“One morning toward the end of February I concealed myself in a
blind before a burrow in a bank of sandy loam beside the Rio Morja,
near the boundary between Guatemala and Honduras. The tunnel was
already well advanced and went far beneath the banana plants at the
top of the bank, which had been freshly cut when the river ate into
the plantation at the last high water. Although I began the watch
early in the morning, it was 11 o’clock before I heard the measured
_kleck kleck kleck_, and turning saw one of the pair approaching
from upstream. It soon entered the burrow and remained within
several minutes, appearing not to notice the rough-winged swallow
that fluttered before the tunnel and several times rested in the
entrance while it was busy inside. On emerging, the kingfisher
perched atop a banana leaf and kept up a running conversation in
low rattles with its mate, out of sight around the bend up-river.
In five minutes it flew upstream to join the other, calling with a
loud _kleck kleck kleck_.
“Soon the pair returned together and began to work in earnest. Each
time one entered the burrow there was a jet of earth thrown out
behind. As the bird moved inward the jet fell short of the entrance
until it could be seen no more. Doubtless the bird continued to
kick the earth back until it reached the head of the excavation,
and so the material loosened by the bill was gradually pushed out
of the tunnel. The kingfishers invariably emerged head first,
indicating that the burrow had reached its final length and had
begun to widen at the far end into the nesting chamber. The bird
inside called in low _klecks_, which were answered by the mate
perched on a rusty tram rail, washed out by the flood, which
leaned against the bank just below the burrow. They seemed to
encourage each other in their dark subterranean labors. Both sexes
shared equally in the toil, and as soon as one emerged and flew
up beside the other on the rail, the latter went into the burrow,
throwing out a jet of earth as he disappeared into the darkness.
Four or five minutes was the usual period spent in the earthwork.
On one occasion both were together in the burrow for a few minutes.
Just after noon, while one bird was working inside, its mate became
tired of waiting on the rail and flew upstream. The other, when
it emerged and found itself alone, followed in this direction.
Although I remained until the middle of the afternoon, the birds
did not return, having worked less than an hour that day.
“I waited almost a month before daring to open the nest. I probed
the length of the burrow with a slender vine, repeating the
measurement several times to make sure I had reached the back. I
found the burrow to be 7 feet 3 inches long, measured back this
distance from the top of the bank, and tried to calculate the
position of the nesting chamber from the direction of the portion
of the tunnel I could see from the front. Experience with Amazon
kingfishers and motmots had taught me that by far the safest way to
open a burrow is to dig down behind it and make an opening in the
back of the nesting chamber just large enough to reach the eggs,
afterward closing it with a stone or a board and carefully covering
over the excavation.
“As I began to dig almost above it, the incubating bird, who had
stood its ground in face of the thrusts with the vine, flew out,
uttered a few _klecks_ and headed upstream, where it perched on a
giant cane leaning over the current and soon plunged for a fish.
I now saw for the first time that it was the male. Like other
burrow-nesting birds under the same circumstances, it seemed rather
unconcerned, and this despite the fact that I afterward found it
the most devoted of parents.”
Because he “had faith that the activities of birds, including
their periods on the nest during incubation, are rhythmic and
more or less constant for the species, rather than irregular
and arbitrary,” Mr. Skutch was determined to learn how these
kingfishers arranged their shifts on the nest. In his efforts to
solve this problem, he was at “first baffled, next challenged,
and finally surprised.” For many weary hours, during nearly two
weeks, and at various hours from dawn to sunset, he patiently
watched that hole in the bank, mostly with little or no results.
The use of what he called a “silent monitor,” a small stick stuck
upright and loosely in the entrance of the burrow, enabled him to
tell that a bird had either entered or left the nest, but did
not tell him the hour or the sex of the bird. His account of how
he accomplished this and finally learned the secret is too long
a story to be told here. But he did finally discover “that there
is a single nest relief each day, early in the morning. This is
comparatively easy to observe, for the bird coming to take its
place in the burrow usually flies downstream sounding his powerful,
metallic _kleck kleck_ at measured intervals, and so heralds his
own arrival.” After three or four false starts he finally gathers
courage to enter the burrow; and, after a minute and a half or two
minutes, his mate launches forth and flies off upstream. The times
at which the relief took place varied from 7:05 to 10:01 a. m.,
most of the shifts being made between seven and nine o’clock. He
says, further: “After I learned what precautions were necessary in
order to determine the sexes of the birds, I found that on some
mornings it was the male who entered and the female who departed,
while on other mornings the reverse was true. There was a regular
alternation, the male entering one morning and the female the next.
“Each afternoon the incubating partner took a single recess, for
food or exercise, from its long 24-hour turn on the eggs. It
emerged suddenly and without warning, at some time between 1 and
4 o’clock, flew upstream to the feeding ground, leaving the nest
unoccupied, and returned in half an hour to an hour. On returning,
it flew downstream low above the water and entered the nest
directly, without perching or calling, in a manner very different
from the morning entry, since there was no mate on the nest to be
advised of its arrival. Then it remained until relieved by the mate
the following morning.
“Few birds incubate so continuously as the ringed kingfishers. One
day the female took her afternoon recess early, and on returning
remained on the nest more than 19 hours, for her mate was very late
in relieving her the next morning, and did not appear until 10
o’clock. The usual period between their return in the afternoon and
their relief the following morning is 16 or 17 hours.”
Mr. Skutch found another nest of this kingfisher “400 feet
downstream in the same bank. I opened it only two days before the
eggs hatched. The bird on the nest, with a degree of attachment
I have rarely seen equaled, remained bravely in the tunnel while
I probed its length, dug in the rear, took out the eggs for
measurement, fitted a stone in the aperture I had made, and tamped
the soil above it. All this occupied well over an hour. This burrow
was 7 feet 9 inches in length and the nesting chamber, 22 inches
below the surface, contained, like the last, four white eggs. The
territories of these two pairs extended in opposite directions
from their burrows, the birds from the upper nest always entering
it from upstream and returning thither when relieved, those in the
lower nest fishing in the river below it.”
_Eggs._--The ringed kingfisher apparently lays three to six eggs
to a set; probably four and five are the commonest numbers. What
few eggs I have seen are pure white; they vary in shape from
ovate to short-ovate; and the shells are smooth and quite glossy.
The measurements of 19 eggs average 43.72 by 34.52 millimeters;
the eggs showing the four extremes measure =46.8= by 35, 43.7 by
=35.6=, and =39.7= by =32.5= millimeters.
_Young._--On the morning of March 28, the female arrived, at the
first burrow examined by Mr. Skutch, at sunrise, an unusually early
hour for her to appear, and seemed to be excited. He opened the
burrow and found that two of the eggs had hatched. The nestlings
were “pink skinned and were without the least vestige of feathers.
They could already stand upright, supporting themselves on their
feet and belly, and attempted to walk, which they did in a weak and
tottering fashion.” Three of the eggs in the other nest hatched the
same day; as he removed the stone from the rear, “a sizzling noise
arose from the earth,” and two of the nestlings retreated into the
tunnel with their mother, where they could not be reached.
Soon after the young in the first nest had hatched, some malicious
person dug into the burrow at both ends but could not reach the
young in the tunnel. Three of these nestlings eventually died,
but the parents continued to feed and brood the fourth in the
exposed and gaping burrow. Then, Mr. Skutch continues: “Stuffed
with whole fish to the bursting point, the single nestling grew
at a tremendous rate. Its eyes opened by the tenth day, when it
uttered a high-pitched, trilling sound in response to its parents’
rattle. It was 14 days before the upper mandible caught up to the
lower in length. The young kingfisher was beginning to defend
itself with energy and bit hard with its great mandibles whenever
I picked it up. A few days later it squealed and fought like a
fury. When 4 weeks old it was fully feathered except for the naked
belly, which rested upon the sandy floor of the foul burrow. To
its biting and squealing it now added an alarm rattle almost as
loud as that of the parents, which at length drew one of them, who
answered in kind. Still it did not attempt to flutter, and when I
placed it on the ground it could do no more than hop along with
outstretched wings. It remained in the burrow a full week after it
was completely feathered, and finally departed at the age of 34 or
35 days.
“Although this nestling was one of the most vociferous I ever
encountered, its struggles and cries were very mild in comparison
with those of the single youngster who survived in the burrow
downstream.” When about 4 weeks old, it was almost as big as its
parents. When he attempted to reach it from the back of the nest,
“it fled through the tunnel and jumped into the river, where it
spread its wings, turned upstream, and flapped its way slowly
against the current. When it encountered obstacles of stranded
brush it hooked its bill over them and scrambled across. Thus it
led me a merry chase, wading in the muddy shallows, until a fallen
banana plant stopped its wayward progress and I seized it. Unlike
its neighbor of the same age upstream, it had not become accustomed
to being taken in hands; its deafening screams and fierce attempts
to bite made, for duration and intensity, the best efforts of the
other pale to insignificance. It was ten agonized minutes before it
became reconciled to me, and I let it perch on my hand until its
feathers dried before returning it to the burrow. This bird left
its burrow between its thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh day.”
_Plumages._--I have seen no very young birds. In immature birds,
probably birds of the first year, the sexes are distinguishable.
In the young male, the jugular area is dull gray washed with
“cinnamon,” and the under tail coverts are pale cinnamon, both
of which parts are pure white in the adult male, though some
adults have the under tail coverts barred with bluish gray; the
brown areas on the under parts are paler than in the adult,
“ochraceous-tawny” to “cinnamon,” more or less mixed with white;
these parts in the adult are rich browns, “Sanford’s brown” to
“cinnamon-rufous”; the upper parts and wing coverts are dotted with
small white spots, and many of the feathers have shaft streaks
or median wedges of black; these parts are clear, grayish blue,
or “delft blue,” in adults, without streaks; young birds also
have broad, median, black streaks in the crest. Young females are
similar to the young males but may be readily recognized by the
broad pectoral band, which is never present in the male at any
age; in the adult female this is clear bluish gray, but in the
young bird it is broadly edged with rufous, or dull brown, and
sometimes mainly rufous; in the young female the under wing coverts
are wholly “cinnamon-rufous,” whereas in the young male these are
partly white.
I have not seen enough material to determine how long these
immature plumages are worn, or to learn much about the molts.
_Food._--Mr. Skutch (MS.) says on this subject: “The ringed
kingfisher’s diet is rather monotonous. They live almost entirely,
if not exclusively on fish, often of large size, which they catch
in the regular manner of kingfishers, but being larger birds their
plunges are more spectacular than those of the others.”
One day “a female flew into a balsa tree, growing beside a small
stream, with a fish fully half as long as herself dangling
crosswise in her bill. For more than two and a half hours by the
watch she held it thus, changing her position only from one branch
to another of the same tree. I was at the time watching a green
kingfisher’s nest, and I could keep her in sight without additional
effort. When at length I was ready to leave, she had begun to
beat her fish against the limb, although it must have been dead
long since. After this exhibition of stolidity, I no longer felt
sorry for the ringed kingfishers because the customs of their race
obliged them to sit on the nest for such long periods.”
_Behavior._--Dr. Charles W. Richmond (1893) found this species very
common in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and he writes of its habits:
One morning a pair of these birds went through a very
curious performance. Attention was first called to them
by their loud rattling cry, which was kept up almost
constantly as they circled and gyrated about over the
water, occasionally dropping--not diving--into the
water, and sinking below the surface for a moment. This
maneuvering lasted some minutes, after which both birds
flew upstream uttering their ordinary note.
Two or three individuals were in the habit of passing
the night at some point on the creek back of the “I. P.”
plantation, and came over just about dusk every evening.
I noticed them for several months, and was struck with
the regularity of their coming, and the course taken by
each on its way to the roost. The birds could be heard a
considerable distance away, just before dusk, uttering
their loud single “chuck” at every few beats of the wings.
They appeared to come from their feeding grounds, often
passing over the plantation opposite, probably to cut off
a bend in the river. One of the birds invariably passed
close to the corner of the laborers’ quarters, though at
considerable height, and the other near a trumpet tree some
distance away. The third bird was only a casual visitor.
At times the birds came together, but usually there was an
interval of several minutes. Their routes met at a turn of
the creek a few rods back of the house, where they usually
sounded their rattling notes and dropped down close to the
water, which they followed to the roost. This was a huge
spreading tree, covered with parasitic plants and numerous
vines, which hung in loops and festoons from the limbs. On
one occasion I shot at one of the birds as it came clucking
overhead, and caused it to drop several small fish. A
female nearly ready to deposit eggs was shot October 9.
Referring to the behavior of ringed kingfishers, Mr. Skutch (MS.)
writes: “Watercourses are their highways, and, like men, they are
frequently reluctant to leave them. One day, ascending in a motor
launch the Toloa Creek in Honduras, we drove a ringed kingfisher
before us for possibly a mile. Each time the boat approached he
would leave his perch, fly a few hundred feet ahead, and finally
alight in a branch overhanging the stream. Here he would wait until
the launch was almost opposite him, then fly ahead of it a few
hundred feet more. Only after this procedure had been repeated many
times did he finally double over the bank and return downstream.”
He noticed, while studying the program of nest relief, that
these kingfishers “showed a certain amount of formalism in their
natures.” One morning while he was on watch, “at 7:30 the male
emerged from the burrow without warning [and without waiting to
be relieved by the female in the usual way] and flew upstream as
usual. I was surprised at this unexpected behavior, but probably
no more than his mate. Five minutes later she appeared from the
direction of his departure and perched in a trumpet tree growing on
the bank a few rods from the burrow, where she often rested before
going to relieve the male on the nest. Soon he reappeared and the
female, who had not moved, greeted him with a rapid, low rattle,
which was evidently a scolding. A minute later he flew upstream
again. I thought now the female would certainly enter, it was her
day upon the nest, but such an unwelcomed entry would have been a
breach in formality, beneath the dignity of a well-bred kingfisher
matron. She delayed another minute, as though considering what
course to follow, then flew off after the delinquent. Soon they
both returned, but separately, and there was a rather lengthy
conversation between the pair as they perched on the banana leaves
near the entrance of the burrow. Finally, after flying back and
forth several times before it, the male entered, rather sheepishly
we may suppose, while his mate continued to _kleck_ from her perch
in a low voice.
“Mrs. kingfisher had won her point. She delayed a seemly interval
for him to compose himself for her reception, then entered herself
with the usual warning. I shall probably never know what passes
between them in the fraction of a minute they must be together in
the nesting chamber, but whatever form of greeting they indulge in,
we may well suppose it was not as cordial as usual. The male came
out in record time, about one minute after his mate’s entry, and
turned upstream, klecking loudly, a free bird at last.”
A change in the behavior of the two males was noted after the
young had hatched in the two nests, of which Mr. Skutch (MS.)
writes: “The males of both nests, both of whom happened to be free
that day, behaved differently than on previous mornings. After
being relieved, they had gone off as usual to their respective
territories up and down the stream; but instead of remaining
there, as they had always done before the eggs hatched, they soon
returned to perch at no great distance from their nests, and loudly
protested my presence. In their excitement, both perched at the
same time in the trumpet tree which grew on the bank of the river
between the two nests, and was apparently the boundary between
their territories. They stood side by side on a branch, their
beautiful, white-barred, slate-colored wings spread until they
almost touched. One raised his crest, but the other laid his flat,
and, with open bills and angry _klecks_, each defied the other to
cross the accepted frontier.”
_Voice._--The same patient observer says: “Now that there were
nestlings, I heard an utterance from the kingfishers that I had
never heard before. It was really not so much a new note as a
different manner of using the old familiar one, for their entire
vocabulary consists of a sound that to our ears is suggested by
the syllable _kleck_, but they employ their single word in a great
variety of ways to express different meanings and emotions. A
single loud _kleck_, uttered at measured intervals, punctuates
their flight; a softer, rapidly repeated _kleck_ is the signal that
a bird wishes to relieve his mate on the nest; and now there were
nestlings to guard they expressed their anxiety by a very loud,
rapid, mechanical klecking, continued with momentary pauses so long
as danger seemed to threaten. This harsh, deafening rattle was
uttered while the bird perched with the bill open, the mandibles
held motionless, and the tail vibrating rapidly up and down. I
never heard another bird make more noise when its nestlings seemed
to be in danger, nor give more evident signs of distress, yet, in
common with other birds which nest underground, they never darted
at me nor made any demonstration. They merely perched in full sight
and rattled interminably.”
DISTRIBUTION
_Range._--Mexico, the Lesser Antilles, Central and South America;
casual in the lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas; nonmigratory.